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National Day of Prayer

So yesterday was America’s National Day of Prayer and yet nothing phenominal, miraculous, or even kind of neat happened. While it cannot be used to prove god’s non-existence, it can be used as evidence of one of four things:

1. Jesus is a liar and either doesn’t listen to prayer or doesn’t have the power to answer them.

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” (John 14:12-14)

This is a pretty direct statement. This tells me that anybody (who believes this rubbish) could say “In Jesus’ name I pray: please, Lord Jesus, heal all the world’s sick and feed the hunger,” and Jesus would make it happen. And yet nothing of the sort happened yesterday. So this tells me either Jesus is totally full of it, or

2. Nobody believes this rubbish. That’s simple enough, right? Maybe plenty of people prayed in Jesus’ name to end world hunger and sickness, and Jesus really, really wanted to do it, but none of them actually had faith in him so he either chose not to answer the prayers because they weren’t sincere enough, or incinsere prayers don’t reach him. Or perhaps

3. The scripture is just false. Whoever took down Jesus’ words got it wrong. Maybe his actual words were “Pray, and something might happen if I get around to it.” But if that little part of scripture is wrong, who’s to say any of it is right? I know A doesn’t necessarily imply B, but it would certainly make the whole thing sketchier. But if Jesus is not a liar and people really do have faith in him, this is to me the logical next option. Unless, of course,

4. Americans just don’t care about sick or dying people. Not a single one of ’em. Not any of the faithful Christians, at least. But (and forgive me for suggesting this) wouldn’t that be a little bit un-Christian? And it’s not like Jesus grants his believers only one prayer. They could have asked him to heal the sick and hungry, then for him to give their third wife a flat tire on her way home so she wouldn’t catch them cheating. Jesus is not a genie in a lamp.

If it’s none of those things, then I simply can’t imagine why Jesus would not have answered any prayers yesterday, on the American government-sanctioned National Day of Prayer.

Or one really faithful sarcastic jackass prayed that nobody’s prayers but his own would be answered.

4 thoughts on “National Day of Prayer”

I may be wasting my time here, but I just gotta say you are really taking scripture out of context. There are a number of things that make up a good hermeneutic, none of which are demonstrated in your post.

If you are really interested in knowing what this scripture teaches, I would be happy to interact with you, but I suspect your ethical commitment to atheism likely precludes such an exchange.

You will love this! Someone disrupted the National Day of Prayer service at the local court house in the small community in which I live. They flew a private two seat helicopter right into the middle of town; the kind with the bubble glass cockpit. It was so loud that when I first heard it coming, I thought it was having engine trouble. I caught the ending of it on video and then uploaded it to Facebook. Naturally, I was unable to contain my glee and apparently I offended quite a few people with that particular post. They acted like I was the one flying the plane and commented on how disrespectful “we” both were. I got deleted a couple of times, but it was well worth it. I felt like the Double Rainbow guy watching Superman fly into the heart of Metropolis in order to sow some justice. WOW!